 Good afternoon, you're all very welcome My name is Paulic Murphy. Could I remind you those who need reminding? before we begin that you do as I do and switch your mobile phone to off the presentation today is part of a series on Opalism and the challenges to deliver lords Which is co-hosted by the Institute and Trinity College Dublin in Association with Trinity research in social sciences We had Last week a presentation in this series by the Minister for finance Who gave part was to my mind a very impressive presentation? Summing up in broad terms was his conclusion was I think it was that populism arose partly from the Propensity of the liberal order to create unacceptable inequalities But he wasn't writing off the liberal order and I here I use Liberal in the sense of this side of the Atlantic and not the other side of the Atlantic he saw Measures to be taken by governments to counteract this tendency to Inequality and his specified inequality of opportunity we have today a Speaker in the shape of professor Jeff Colligan Who is an associate professor at the political science department of Brown University and The director of security studies at the Watson Institute of international and public affairs I won't preempt what he has to say, but I think from what I know of him. He would be giving a more International view of the problem. So we look forward very much to hearing from you Professor Colligan Thank you Well, good afternoon, and thank you for coming It's an honor for me to be here today and a pleasure to be back in Dublin You know, there's no country on earth that is more welcoming to a redheaded visitor than Ireland It's hard to blend in as a redhead in the Middle East or Latin America or wherever you might go But here I have it shot at least until I open my mouth and then the gig is up I was invited to speak about the liberal order is rigged Which is an article that Robert Kohane and I wrote in March 2017 For the journal for an affairs And we were reacting to two events that were then quite recent the Brexit referendum in the UK and the election President Donald J. Trump And we pointed out that the analysts of international relations had until then focused heavily on factors like the rise of China ongoing Islamic terrorism and a resurgent Russia But the biggest threat to the liberal international order that the West had created in the years since 1945 was Not from these external forces, but from within that domestic politics in the West were crucial to understanding world order And the liberal or international order is a set of governing arrangements underpinned by a set of ideas and manifested by a set of institutions like the United Nations the IMF NATO the European Union and the World Trade Organization And while the liberal order has been an extraordinary success in certain ways, it has also become self-defeating partly by contributing to deepening economic inequality and the politics that follow from it and partly because of missteps by self-satisfied elites And so today I want to share our analysis with you, but also update it over the last couple of years Three broad visions have emerged about the liberal order. The first is to hold on to maintain yesterday's Version the second is to rip it down That's the the populist revolt we see in many countries including the United States And the third is a progressive counter revolt led in the United States by people like senator Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders And I want to suggest to you that an international order is politically sustainable Only if it meets three criteria At first it has to share the wealth within their both societies and and do so visibly Second it has to harness international cooperation myopic nationalism hurts everyone and Third it has to respect national communities and that has consequences for immigration dealing with information warfare and much else and Each of the three competing visions that have emerged recently fails on at least one of these three criteria And that suggests that those of us who care about international order, and I imagine most people in this room do Still have some work to do So let's take each of these three visions in turn Start with the the post 1945 liberal order It has multiple successes First and foremost it helped preserve peace among the great powers It's easy to lose sight of the magnitude of that accomplishment Over the the last 70 years or so is a uniquely Peaceful period among major powers at least since the end of the Roman Empire And the stability provided by the local order discouraged countries such as Germany Japan Saudi Arabia and South Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons the order also allowed Europe to rebuild after World War two and Then the developing world to advance unevenly But with billions of people rising out of poverty and new middle classes burgeoning all over the world But for all its successes the orders institutions became disconnected from domestic society in the very countries that created them a neoliberal economic agenda, especially after about 1980 eroded the social contract that Provides the crucial political support needed for the liberal order's long-term survival Many middle-class and working-class voters in the United Kingdom the United States and elsewhere came to believe With a good deal of justification that the system is rigged Those of us who have not only analyzed globalization and the liberal order, but have celebrated them Share some responsibility for the rise of populism We did not pay enough attention as capitalism hijacked globalization International institutions were created by and for economic elites Who created firmer links between themselves and governments and ordinary people were left out So let's put some facts behind that between 1974 and 2015 real median household incomes for Americans with no college education fell by roughly 20% Those with college degrees saw their incomes rise by 17% and even more so for those with graduate degrees So the bill for that broken social contract came due in 2016 on both sides of the Atlantic Since then we have continued to see signs of populist dissatisfaction the gilet-jeune's movement in France and Belgium is an obvious case and Italian-Austrian and Danish politics are more complicated, but also animated by populist anger Of course economic factors are not the only thing that mattered social values identity politics and partisan polarization played a vital role and social scientists have had a good time over the last two years arguing about whether it is economic factors or non-economic factors that do most of the work and explaining the rise of populism Both things matter There's no question that if you survey voters about their concerns what gets expressed tends to be Social values and issues of trust in society not the details of economic policy That's not top of mind for most most voters Underneath them economics matter. It always does and whether in Weimar Germany Where the Nazis flourish or in Venezuela in the 1990s that produced Hugo Chavez stagnating unequal economies breed populist discontent to international factors Exacerbate this problem in today's Europe and North America The first was a loss of social solidarity brought on by the end of the Cold War During that period the perceived Soviet threat generated a strong US attachment not only to its alliances But to other multilateral institutions and social psychologists have demonstrated the crucial importance of othering in identity formation For individuals and nations alike a clear sense of who is not on your team Makes you feel closer to those who are in the fall of the Soviet Union removed the main other from the American political imagination and thereby reduced social cohesion and This was especially problematic for the Republican Party Which had long been a bastion of tough on Communism anti-communism And with the Soviets gone the Republicans bet noir Gradually shifted from communists to Washington elites and Trump ism is the logical extension of that movement In Europe the end of the Cold War was consequential for a somewhat different reason during the Cold War leaders in Western Europe Constantly sought to stave off the domestic appeal of communism and socialism After 1989 no longer facing that constraint National governments and EU officials in Brussels expanded the Union's authority to that trend and sorry Expanded the Union's authority and scope Even in the face of a series of national referenda that expressed opposition to that trend and should have served as warning signs of growing working-class discontent and That points to the second exacerbating force namely multilateral overreach Institutions like the UN and the EU can facilitate cooperation and solve mutual problems But doing so requires that countries curb their autonomy somewhat The natural tendency of such institutions like all institutions is to expand their authority on each occasion There is some seemingly valid rationale The cumulative effect of such expansions of international authority however is to excessively limit Sovereignty and give people the sense that foreign forces are controlling their lives The Brexit vote demonstrated the consequences of a lack of responsiveness in Brussels to national concerns even though ironically The utter mess that British politicians have made of Bruxett might actually reinforce the complacency in Brussels Multilateral institutions must never assume that voters have no alternative and must do whatever they insist Voters always have an alternative. So collectively these failures of the liberal order helped generate a populist revolt in many countries and that revolt manifests the second of the three visions I Identified earlier namely to rip down the liberal order And I am not a fan, but let's give this vision it to do it gets a few big things right and I'll name four China is a real problem Burden sharing in alliances like NATO Is not always well balanced The gains of economic integration Are not being well distributed in the United States especially but also much of Europe and Immigration does bring challenges even if populists exaggerate them and then mix in racism and xenophobia So the populist vision is a nationalist one where each country looks out for itself multilateral cooperation is thin and rare and International politics is transactional rather than based on relationships That approach is profoundly flawed because it has countries withdrawing from the world Just when we need more international cooperation, not less Two big risks from this approach jump out immediately the first is climate change our planet has a fever and humans are the cause of it The damage we are doing to our world will far outweigh the cost of taking sensible steps right now To mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions Yet we are failing to do so and Part of the reason we are failing is that each state hopes that the rest of the world will move first So that it won't have to bear so much of the cost Populists and nationalists have no answer for that problem and by extension no answer to the central global threat of our times As if that wasn't enough the second big risk is the rising chance of major power war Populists want tough-minded realism But tough-minded realism is in some sense a self-fulfilling prophecy It weakens the economic and non-economic bonds between states and creates an atmosphere of distrust And of course positive diplomacy does not mean that you know pretty words can can make whatever world we want but ideas matter and People always have choices the wrong words can push the wrong ideas and in the long run the wrong Ideas could put major powers on the path to war So these two big risks are flanked by a host of other ones We need a coherent Western response to various abuses by Russia by China by the Saudis and by others We also need to manage the increasing complexity of interdependence among liberal democracies And all these issues the populist approach to a foreign policy is a dead-end It has inspired though a third vision a foreign policy by those on the progressive left and Here I must limit myself To speak only of the American progressive left Because it is the one I know best though. I believe there are parallels in other countries as well Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and two probable contenders for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2020 each recently gave major foreign policy addresses describing their outlooks and Scholars and analysts like my colleague Dan Nexon have added to this collection Progressives want a long list of changes to US foreign policy particularly current US foreign policy and the list includes a recommitment to allies and to multilateral deals like the Paris Agreement on climate and the Iran nuclear deal They want withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq Giving labor leaders a seat at the table for international trade deals Greater transparency of cross-national asset flows and curbs on corporate tax havens Protecting the electoral process from foreign interference Reversing huge tax cuts for the rich that exacerbate the deficit and crowds out other government priorities and a recommitment to Nuclear non-proliferation and arms control so they get a lot of things right in that list Above all they understand that the dividing line between foreign and domestic politics has disappeared in the 21st century Elizabeth Warren writes that Actions that undermine working families in this country Ultimately erode American strength in the world, but progressives also tend to dodge some of the big issues The clearest case of that tendency is on the crucial issue of immigration Where progressive leaders barely mention it at all? It is an issue that they would rather not talk about Because different parts of the progressive coalition want different things on immigration And that approach won't cut it While their leaders waffle or remain mute some progressives have led a social media campaign hashtag abolish ice Referring to the the US immigration and customs enforcement agency And that creates the impression that progressives want open borders and no limits on immigration at all Other progressives want immigration with sensible limits But that message gets drowned out And by contrast the populist right has a very clear message on immigration Populist blame immigrants for crime Strain on public services demographic change and loss of social solidarity Like it or not that message is appealing For a significant part of the electorate in many countries Maybe not this one. We were talking about that at lunch, but many countries Fear and xenophobia are powerful political weapons and plenty of demagogues on the right know how to wield them Populist discontent is also not all racism and hatred Populists have tapped into a genuine desire for sustaining national culture That desire is understandable and it is keenly felt in almost every nation on earth It is undeniably true that immigration can change a national culture over time Even though as progressives would point out immigration is part of what enriches a national culture to The real question here is about how to balance social tradition with social renewal Besides immigration progressives can also be a bit incoherent on trade and they talk tough on China or Mexico, but they also praise the WTO and criticize things like Trump's NAFTA's replacement So progressives leave voters confused. Do they want trade or not? And they are not clear enough that the desirability of trade depends crucially on one's trading partners especially trade among complex economies good trade rests on trust relationships between countries and a certain degree of compatibility between domestic systems So if we return to the the criteria for a sustainable order that I mentioned at the outset We see that each of the three alternative visions Fails on at least one of the criteria Clinging to yesterday's liberal order does not spread the wealth nearly evenly enough which rots the domestic support for it over time Populist nationalism does not harness international cooperation to meet the crucial challenges of global interdependence Most notably climate change but other things as well and the progressive alternative does not do enough to respect national communities at least on the issue of immigration though. It does do better than most on You know emphasizing the need to protect elections from foreign interference So how to move them forward in a better direction Let's turn those criteria for politically sustainable international order into design principles and start with the principle of Harnessing the power of multilateral multilateral cooperation Not every issue needs to be solved at the global level But there are some things that we must do together as a world community despite our very real differences Climate change arms control dispute resolution and peacekeeping protection of the oceans preventing disease pandemics are all candidates for this type of cooperation on these issues the liberal democracies of Europe and North America Have to cooperate with autocracies like China and Russia Let me say one more word of a climate change The gilet jaune in France who got started by protesting a hike in fuel prices that the government Justified as an environmental measure Our only one of several indicators if you look around the world that the costs of preventing climate change Cannot be placed Disproportionately on the working class Just the opposite in fact elites must face the fact that if they want to pass on a Good world to their children They must know we must Be willing to bear the bulk of the cost of at least the first steps of reducing greenhouse gas emissions So I find promising the discussions in the US Congress of a green new deal Which marries environmental and inequality concerns together The second step is to design trade deals and other forms of economic integration which includes the movement of people and Money as well as goods in ways that shares the wealth among the working classes of liberal societies And in practice, I suspect that means linking the most favored nation principle To the compatibility of domestic economic and legal systems While liberal democracies can and should cooperate with autocracies in some areas They should reserve the strongest forms of cooperation to other liberal democracies And my recommendation here reflects the trajectory of Russia and China over the last 30 years There was a time especially in the late 1990s early 2000s when Americans and Europeans hoped or believed That by integrating Russia and China into the world economy and giving them membership in the WTO we could shape their economies in a more capitalist direction bound by the rule of law It might even lead to democracy Today I think the hard facts are quite clear Russia and China are as autocratic as ever and they are not going to change due to external forces In fact their governments are likely to take advantage of openness by liberal democracies to suit their own needs It is with regret but also a dose of real urgency That liberal democracies must tighten market access against non-liberal societies The main reason for doing so is to help ensure that the gains from such integration are shared internally domestically And that trade deals do not undermine the working classes or national security Yet the club model of Economic integration comes with an important side benefit namely that it generates an incentive for semi-autocratic countries or fragile democracies To liberalize and to maintain the rule of law so that they can be part of that integration The third principle is to respect national communities and that can be translated into policy in a variety of Domains both foreign and domestic I'm especially drawn to proposals from political scientists Ken Sheevy and Matthew Slaughter They call for a reversal of the regressive tax cuts in the United States And plowing that money back into lifelong learning initiatives to raise Human capital in the working classes in the United States Those proposals are needed more in the US than in Europe, but nonetheless Sheevy and Slaughter's focus on career-long education and Incremental retraining is something that deserves I think more attention even in Europe Economists like Danny Rodrick and Gabriel Zuckman also have some good ideas I think Europeans would be especially wise to confront Roderick's trilemma Which stipulates that there are you know three things of which a country can have at most two namely national sovereignty electoral politics and deep economic integration So there's tension between those three As Roderick points out most politicians in Europe gloss over the trade-offs And are vague about what balance between those three and that they favor and regrettably Only the xenophobic Nationalists are really clear about where they stand with respect to that to Roderick's trilemma They they prioritize national autonomy and electoral politics at the price of international integration They're willing to give that on Immigration I think centrists and progressives must have a clear answer that favors controlled immigration. I'm an immigrant myself We should clearly and firmly reject the idea of completely open borders as unwise and politically unsustainable But moderate immigration Enriches a nation materially and socially. It's really beneficial Immigrants should be able to earn their way to full citizenship over time But that does not mean that they have to have full access to all parts of the welfare state from the very first day that they arrived More broadly those who favor international cooperation Must have a simple message to match the likes of Donald Trump Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen Populism has a clear marketable ideology defined by toughness nationalism and nativism like it or not America first is a marketable slogan To respond pro bono proponents must offer a similarly clear Coherent alternative and it must offer an appealing vision for our children's future So put these three elements together kind of a thin network of global cooperation on certain key issues a thick club model of Economic integration among liberal democracies and a set of national policies to support international openness and you get a kind of Multi-speed form of international order and I think you Europeans know more about the pros and cons of multi-speed Integration than we North Americans do But it is high time we caught up The post-cold war Unipolar moment is over and the United States cannot afford to have a monolithic vision for world order Successful cooperation will be Differentiated cooperation So let me wrap up by returning us to that moment in the closing days of World War two when the liberal order was originally designed Before the Cold War even began the liberal order was built to avoid the dangers of excessive nationalism Today nationalist ideas ride again Donald Trump declares himself a nationalist It is an ideal ideology that will probably never be wholly defeated There will always be some who want to twist the identity of a nation to serve their own purposes And I think it is time that progressives centrist and liberals of all stripes Went on the attack for the battle of national identity politics The challenges are from within and from without whether it is ethno nationalism in the White House or Authoritarianism in Beijing and Moscow Like the answer to those challenges Let the answer to those challenges be a rejuvenated liberalism One tempered by the lessons of history and the desire to create opportunity for all members of society Liberal society is based on freedom pluralism democracy enterprise At its best it brings together market competition with social solidarity That is a vision that is appealing and it is one that works And stack that up against the Chinese or Russian model Anytime anywhere in the world any day of the week and let's see who comes out on top Thanks so much for listening